State Sen. Jeff Bridges, the chair of the highly effective Joint Price range Committee, will run for Colorado treasurer in 2026, he stated forward of a Tuesday marketing campaign launch.
The state treasurer’s workplace manages the state’s funds. Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat, stated he additionally sees the place as a chance to speculate immediately in Colorado as an alternative of parking state cash in issues like federal treasury payments.
“There’s a solution to run the workplace that creates a direct and significant affect within the state of Colorado,” Bridges stated in an interview. “It’s a new and thrilling toolbox to do quite a lot of the work I’ve been doing on housing affordability, renewable vitality and the entire issues which might be essential to the individuals of Colorado.”
He envisions utilizing state cash to spend money on inexpensive housing, inexperienced vitality manufacturing and infrastructure, whereas maintaining cash accessible for when it’s wanted.
“We have to spend money on our future,” Bridges stated. “Generally investing in our future means you want it actually liquid. Generally it means you really want a extremely excessive greenback return. Generally it means you want housing that Coloradans can afford, clear vitality to allow them to effectively warmth their properties, and infrastructure that will get them that high-paying job they should afford to reside right here.”
Bridges is the fourth entrant within the race. Up to now, state Rep. Brianna Titone, Jerry DiTullio and John Mikos, all Democrats, have introduced their candidacies for the workplace. No Republicans have but filed for it.
Bridges has served in elected workplace since 2017 and has helped write the state finances since 2022. He was reelected to his second and last four-year time period in 2024. Moreover the finances committee, he’s chaired the Senate finance and schooling committees.
Previous to elected workplace, he labored for then-U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar and an funding administration agency shortly after he graduated from Harvard Divinity College.
As chair of the finances committee this yr, he has helped shut a $1.2 billion finances shortfall that was pushed by spiking Medicaid prices. The committee was capable of protect core spending on well being care and schooling by discovering cuts elsewhere. It known as for combing by means of the entire finances’s nooks and crannies and creating the “most complex finances the state has ever had,” he stated.
Bridges known as it “a few of the hardest work I’ve ever achieved and a few of the most rewarding.”
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